Night of the Flying Merfolk
The "bedtime story" reminder text does more than earn a laugh: it reschedules the entire Saga's clock in a way the chapter numbers alone conceal. A standard Saga advances on your main phase, so each chapter lands with the whole turn's combat still ahead of it. This one holds its first counter until your end step, meaning it enters and idles through the turn you cast it before Chapter I fires and makes two Merfolk at the very end. From there it unrolls one chapter per end step, and every effect arrives half a turn out of sync with the combat it cares about. The Chapter I tokens get a full turn cycle to attack before Chapter II shows up, so the flying counters land on creatures already tapped from swinging, arming next turn's evasive strike rather than the current one. Chapter III also resolves at end step, after combat has closed, so its draw counts damage that already connected instead of setting up an attack still to come. That off-tempo timing is the design premise, not a penalty bolted onto an ordinary Saga: an evasion-and-refuel engine deliberately shifted one beat late, where every chapter reads as retrospective (rewarding what already happened) rather than prospective (enabling what's about to). Sequencing it well means playing against instinct, to a clock that always ticks a beat behind.
